The essence of electronic commerce is the exchange of information. The most common form of electronic commerce entails the purchase of products over the Internet using a credit card. Information necessary to consummate a credit card transaction includes the data subjects name, address, credit card information, and the amount to be charge. While the term “electronic commerce” is generally associated with the purchase of goods and services over the Internet, the term encompasses other transactions as well. For example, applications for insurance, college admissions, and loans are transactions that are not purchase transactions. Hence the term “transaction” is generally used herein to describe all manner of interactions over a network of the type noted above. The common element to all transactions is the transfer of data from one party to another.
A person want to send personal data (the “data subject”) can either type in the required information each time a transaction is consummated or store the data for retrieval. Typing in data is not only inefficient and prone to errors, but discourages electronic commerce. Using a local software solution is generally considered undesirable, as most such software programs are proprietary to a particular payment system, require the data subject to become skilled in the operation of the program, and are perceived as slow or unwieldy.
Recently, wireless Internet services have been developed to allow data subject use of wireless network communication devices such as wireless phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants) to send and receive information over the Internet. Wireless devices generally have limited memory making wallet software that is resident on a network communication device impractical. Even if wallet software for wireless devices could be written compactly, updating such software could prove very difficult. Many of these phones use proprietary software, so custom wallet software would need to be provided.
Similarly, cable television systems have evolved into two-way networks in which the data subject uses a network device to send and receive information over the cable network. The cable network communication device may be a set-top box or a remote unit. Like the wireless device, memory is limited and wallet software is impractical.
Therefore, a need exists for a system that allows a data subject to send data information to a data recipient over a common network in a manner that offers security, allows access from any network communication device that has access to the common network, and allows system upgrades without dependency on changing software on the data subjects' network communication device.